Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The fall of Constantinople!


Today we learned about the fall of the great city of Constantinople in History today. The kids had fun learning about this great city and the many times it had been attacked. Mehemed, the Turkish sultan, was determined to see it fall, and fall it did. He even had his men drag his ships over land to attack the city on the north side that was so well protected, and used the largest cannons ever seen at that time. So in of this great cities fall we made a cannon out of toilet paper rolls, paper clips and rubber bands. It may not knock down a city wall, but I am sure it could knock out an eye!

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Back to School!


After a month off for Christmas/Snow break we are back in business with our normal school routine. It feels good to be back into a routine, even though the kids would probably not agree with me.
We started learning about ancient China this week. We studied about Genghis Khan and his rein of terror, followed by his Grandson Kublai Khan. Not so nice men. For our project we created Chinese Lanterns out of paper, yarn and the kids art work. We even wrote some Chinese characters on the lanterns. We also read a book about the Great China Wall. We all decided that was some place we would all like to travel to for a home school vacation.